Why Blade Runner Remains a Masterpiece 44 Years Later

Ridley Scott is known for his brilliant sense of style when crafting a story. A lot of it started with our collective obsession over his movies from the 70s and 80s. There is no science fiction eye quite like Scott’s. That has been made clear by the continued connection to his work even decades later. Franchises spawned from the world of Alien, released in 1979 and written by Dan O’Bannon, proved that the worlds Scott builds can captivate audiences. Yet looking back at his most iconic films, especially in the sci-fi genre, one still stands leagues above the pack.

After his 1979 hit with Alien that terrified audiences about space and what lurks in the shadows or your stomach, Scott took audiences to a more Earth-bound sci-fi set adventure. Venturing to the terrifying world of Los Angeles in November of 2019, the film Blade Runner came to life. Based on the Philip K. Dick novel titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the film allowed famed Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark star Harrison Ford the chance to dive into a true science fiction film. He had been labeled as such thanks to both Han Solo and Indiana Jones despite both movies existing within the fantasy genre, but Blade Runner brought science fiction to life in a grounded reality of future Los Angeles.

Starring Ford, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer, and more, Scott’s vision of the world that Dick created is visually stunning and iconic. When you mention Blade Runner, most everyone can picture the raining Los Angeles landscape or even the now iconic look of Young’s portrayal of the replicant Rachael who challenged Rick Deckard’s idea of what makes a replicant artificial rather than human. Much of what made Blade Runner special was rooted in constant theories from fans questioning whether Rick was actually a replicant or not. Beyond that, the film itself gave fans a dark look at the future rather than the optimistic ideals many tried to infuse into science fiction stories.

It was not Scott’s first real sci-fi film either. While Alien was historic for its mixing of genres, it was still a science fiction film alongside its horror elements. The neo-noir feel of Blade Runner taken into the genre has continued to inspire filmmakers. As recently as this year, the new Netflix animated film Ray Gunn takes elements from Scott’s work in Blade Runner into its aesthetic choices.

A Misunderstood Love Story

The aspect of Blade Runner that has continued to captivate audiences is less about the science fiction of it all and more about the human elements of the story. In Denis Villeneuve’s 2019 film Blade Runner 2049, Officer K played by Ryan Gosling saw it firsthand with his own love for Joi played by Ana de Armas, a beautiful AI system that promised him love and attention. It harkened back to Rick’s own love for Rachael and the mystery of what their love as a human and a replicant could really do to the world at large. That was a driving force of the sequel and colored the world in the original film as well.

Rick’s hatred for replicants faded as he got closer to Rachael and it made Blade Runner less about science fiction and more about human elements. We get glimpses of Rick’s own hard exterior breaking around her, slowly falling in love with a replicant he swore was less than him because of his status as a human. In Blade Runner 2049, one of the most beautiful moments comes from Dave Bautista’s Sapper Morton, an outlawed model of a replicant that K finds.

It would be easy to look at Blade Runner on paper and think that it is simply another sci-fi story providing a look at the future, especially with Hauer’s Roy Batty leading the charge of the replicants. Instead, what makes Scott’s vision so unique is the stylistic choice to bring noir to the screen with sci-fi elements by making characters feel human and real while being replicants.

You can see what Scott built in Blade Runner.

Source: Polygon